Letter from Liberia (continued)

The street scene in Monrovia is post-apocalyptic: people occupy the shell of a previous existence. The InterContinental Hotel is a slum, home to hundreds. The old executive mansion is broken open like a child's playhouse; young men sit on the skeletal spiral staircase, taking advantage of the shade. Abraham points out Liberia's state seal on the wall: a ship at anchor with the inscription The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here. In 1822 freed American slaves (known as Americo-Liberians or, colloquially, Congos) founded the colony at the instigation of the American Colonization Society, a coalition of slave owners and politicians whose motives are not hard to tease out.

Even Liberia's roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s a small colony of 3,000 souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, they demanded the 'Country of Liberia' declare its independence. It was the first of many category errors: Liberia was not yet a country. Their agricultural exports were soon dwarfed by the price of imports. A pattern of European loans (and defaulting on same) began in the 1870s. The money was used to partially modernise the black Americo-Liberian hinterlands while ignoring the impoverished indigenous interior. The relationship between the two communities is a lesson in the factitiousness of 'race'. To the Americo-Liberians, these were 'natives' - they continued an illicit slave trade in Malinke people until the 1850s. As late as 1931, the League of Nations uncovered the use of forced indigenous labour.

Abraham, in the front seat, bends his head round to Lysbeth in the back: 'You know what we say to that seal? The Love of Liberty MET us here.' This is a popular Liberian joke. He laughs immoderately. 'So that's how it was. They came here and always kept the power away from us! They had their True Whig Party and for 133 years we were a peaceful one-party state. But there was no justice. The indigenous are 95 per cent of this country, but we had nothing. Oh, those Congos - they had every little bit of power. Everyone in the government was Congo. They did each other favours, gave each other money. We were not even allowed the vote until the Sixties!'

Lys asks a reasonable question: 'But how would one know someone was a Congo?'

'Oh, you would know. They had a way of speaking, a way of dressing. They always called each other Mister. Always the Big Man. And they lived very well. This,' he says, waving at the devastation of Monrovia, 'was all very nice.'

The largest concrete structures - the old ministry of health, the old ministry of defence, the True Whig Party headquarters - are remnants of the peaceful, unjust regimes of President Tubman (1944-71) and President Tolbert (1971-80), for whom Liberians feel a perverse nostalgia. The university, the hospital, the schools, these were financed by a True Whig policy of massive international loans and deregulated foreign-business concessions, typically given to agriculturally 'extractive' companies which ship resources directly out of the country without committing their companies to any value-added processing. For much of the 20th century Liberia had a nickname: Firestone Republic. The deals which condemned Liberians to poverty wages and inhumane living conditions were made in these old government buildings. The people who benefited most from these deals worked in these buildings. Now these buildings have rags hanging from their windows, bullet holes in their facades, and thousands of squatters inside, without toilets, without running water. Naturally, new buildings are built, new deals are made. On 28 January 2005, while an interim 'caretaker' government presided briefly over a ruined country (the elections were due later that year), Firestone rushed through a new concession: 50 cents an acre for the next 37 years.

A processing plant - for which Liberians have been asking since the Seventies - was not part of this deal. Ministers of finance and agriculture, who had no mandate from the people, who would be out of office in a few months, negotiated the deal. It was signed in the cabinet room at the Executive Mansion in the presence of John Blaney, US ambassador at the time. During the same period, Mittal Steel acquired the country's iron ore, giving the company virtual control of the vast Nimba concession area. The campaigning group Global Witness described the Mittal deal as a 'case study in which multinational corporations seek to maximise profit by using an international regulatory void to gain concessions and contracts which strongly favour the corporation over the host nation'.

It is a frustration for activists that Liberians have tended not to trace their trouble back to extractive foreign companies or their government lobbies. Liberians don't think that way. Most Liberians know how much a rubber tapper gets paid: US$35 a month. Everyone knows how much a government minister is paid: US$2,000 a month - a Liberian fortune. No one can tell you Firestone's annual profit (in 2005, from its Liberia production alone: US$81,242,190). In a country without a middle or working class, without a functioning civic life, government is all. It is all there is of money, of housing, of healthcare and schooling, of normal life. It is the focus of all aspirations, all fury. One of the more reliable signs of weak democracy is the synonymity of the word 'government' with government buildings. Storming Downing Street and killing the prime minister would not transfer executive power. In Liberia, as in Haiti, the opposite is true. The violence of the past quarter-century has in part represented a battle over Congo real estate, in particular the second, infamous 'Executive Mansion'. It is hard to find any Liberian entirely free of the mystique of this building. In the book Liberia: The Heart of Darkness , a gruesome account of the 1989-97 war, the author Gabriel Williams's descriptions of 1990's catastrophic battle for Monrovia are half war report, half property magazine: 'From the university campus [Charles Taylor's] NPFL pounded the heavily fortified Executive Mansion: the huge magnificent structure built in 1964 by the Israelis at the cost of US$20m. With its back to the brilliant white beach of the Atlantic, the Executive Mansion is located at the point where West Africa comes closest to Brazil.'

In 1990, that was President Charles Doe inside, refusing to leave. Ten years earlier, when the 28-year-old Doe, a Krahn tribesman and master sergeant in the Liberian army, staged his coup d'etat, his focus was also the Executive Mansion. He fought his way in, disembowelling President Tolbert in his bed.

We visit Red Light market. Aubrey: 'Why is it called Red Light?' Abraham: 'Because a set of traffic lights used to be here.' It is a circular piece of land, surrounded by small shops and swarming with street traders. The shops have names like the Arun Brothers and Ziad's, all Lebanese owned, as is the Mamba Point Hotel. Almost all small business in Liberia is Lebanese owned. Abraham shrugs: 'They simply had money at a time when we had no money.' The bleak punchline is Liberia's citizenship laws: anyone not 'of African descent' cannot be a citizen. Lebanese money goes straight back to the Lebanon.

Women crouch round the market's perimeter selling little polythene bags of soap powder. Some are from Wocdal (Women and Children Development Association of Liberia), funded by Oxfam. Wocdal loans them 100 Liberian dollars for a day (less than US$2). This gives the women a slight economic advantage in Red Light, analogous to the one the Lebanese had over the Liberians in the Fifties: money when others have none. No one else in Red Light can afford to buy a full box of soap powder. This the women sell in pieces, keeping the profit, and returning the $100 to Wocdal. It is a curious fact that a box of soap powder, sold in many small parts, generates more money in the third world than the first. A woman with five children tells us this enables her to send two of them to school. The other three work alongside her in the market. 'I send the 14- and 15-year-olds to school, because they will be finished sooner,' she explains. 'The five, six- and seven-year-olds work with me.'

Thursday

From the 4x4, West Point does not look like a 'flagship project'. A narrow corridor of filth, lined on either side with small dwellings made of trash, mud, scrap metal. Children with distended bellies, rotting food, men breaking rocks. It stretches for miles. The vehicle sticks in an alley too narrow to pass. The visitors must walk. Close up, the scene is different. It is not one corridor. It is a city. Food is cooking. Small stalls, chicken skewers for sale. Children trail Aubrey wanting their photograph taken. They pose boldly: big fists on knobby, twiggy arms. No one begs. We stop by a workshop stockpiled with wooden desks and chairs, solid, not un-beautiful. They are presently being varnished a caramel brown. A very tall young white man is here to show us around, Oxfam's programme manager at West Point. 'This,' he says, plac ing both hands hard on the nearest desk for emphasis, 'is great workmanship, no?' Lysbeth peers at the wood: 'Um, you do know that's not quite dry?'

Patrick Alix is 30 years old. He is distinctly aristocratic-looking, half French, and so unrelievedly serious the urge is to say stupid things in his presence. Before coming to West Point, Patrick was in Zambia doing emergency work, qualified as a chartered accountant, worked for the World Wildlife Fund in Indonesia, performed a management evaluation of the French nuclear fusion reactor programme, produced a reggae album in Haiti and played violin in the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. This is not an exhaustive list. He has seen the situation in Liberia progress from the direst emergency to the beginnings of 'development'. 'Basically, we've followed the returnees from the camps - many settled in this community - 65,000 people live here, 30,000 of them children. Now, there are 19 schools in the slum, yes? So...' Wait. There are schools in a slum? Patrick stops walking. 'Sure,' he says. 'But we're going to the only government one. The rest are private, sharing space with churches, or mosques, with volunteer teachers. There's also a teacher's council here, a commissioner, the township council - you understand the slum is a township? It's organised into blocks and zones. The area representatives call meetings. Otherwise nothing would get done.'

He sets off quickly through the chaotic little alleys, sure of his way. When we arrive Patrick says: 'You should have seen it before. This is the "after" picture!' Aubrey takes a photograph of the long, low concrete building; its four large, bare rooms. Patrick says: 'So Liberia has this unique freed-slave history... what this means is the government structures were simply borrowed; lots of titles - minister for this, minister for that - but that was cosmetic... now, things have changed, they've pledged 10 per cent of their budget to education, which is enormous percentage-wise, but still only US$12m for the whole country. There's too much to be done right now. NGOs fill the gap. What you saw back there was part of our livelihood project: fathers are taught how to make school furniture, which we the school buy from them at a fair price. They also sell this furniture to all the schools in West Point. And mothers make the uniforms - if that doesn't sound too traditionally gendered...'

Standing in front of the school are John Brownell, who manages the livelihood project, and Ella Coleman, who until recently was West Point's commissioner. Mr Brownell is a celebrity in West Point: he played football for Liberia. This took him to the US and Brazil. 'Rio de Janeiro!' he says, and smiles fondly, as if speaking of heaven. He is crisp-shirted despite the heat, broad as a rugby player. Ms Coleman is a kind of celebrity, too, well known throughout West Point. Hers is a hands-on approach to pastoral care. She will enter homes to check on suspected abuse. She keeps children at her own house if she fears for their safety. She is impassioned: 'We have seven-year-old girls being raped by big men! I talk to parents - I educate people. People are so poor and desperate. They don't know. For example, if a mother is keeping her child home to earn 50 Liberian dollars at the market, I say to her: "That will keep you for a day! What about the future?" One of our very young boys, he was always touching one of our girls, so I made him a friend. He was suspended - but sitting out there will not help. I went to his house. The whole family sleeps in one room. I said to his parents: "You have exposed these children to these things too early. Anything that happens to this little girl, I will hold you responsible!"'

And are some of your students ex-combatants? 'Oh, my girl,' says Ms Coleman sadly, 'there are ex-combatants everywhere. People live next to boys who killed their own families. We, as a people, have so much healing to do.'

Patrick explains logistics. The principal of the school is on US$30 a month. To rent a shack in the slum for a month is US$4 a week. Liberian teachers are easily bribed. You pay a little, you pass your exam. At university level the problem is endemic. Teaching qualifications are usually dubious. 'It's dull to repeat, but this all stems from extreme poverty. If you're a teacher living in a shack on a pile of rubbish, you'd probably do the same.' Mr Brownell speaks hopefully of the Fast Track Initiative, to which Liberia has applied for money. He puffs out his wide chest proudly. One of the aims is to reduce class size from 344:1 to 130:1. Patrick nods quickly: 'Yes, Big Man... but that will take three years - while strategies are being made, these children need something now. Look at them. They're waiting.'

'This is the sad truth,' says Brownell.

In the shade, four girls are instructed to speak with us. The conversation is brief. They all want to be doctors. They kick the dust, refuse to make eye contact. We have only inanities to offer anyway. 'It's good that you all want to be doctors. The doctors will teach new doctors. There'll be so many doctors in Liberia soon!'

The visitors wilt slightly; sit on a wall. The schoolgirls look on with pity - an unbearable → ← reversal. They run off to help their mothers in the market. Meanwhile, Ms Coleman is still talking; she is explaining that at some point the government will clear this slum, this school, everything and everyone in it. She does not think the situation impossible. She does not yet suffer from 'charity fatigue'. She is saying: 'I trust it will be for the best. We made this community from the dirt, but we can't stay here.'

Friday

Bong Country is beautiful. Lush green forest, a sweet breeze. There are pygmy hippopotami here and monkeys; a sense of Liberia's possibilities. Rich in natural resources, cool in the hills, hot on the beach. Nyan P Zikeh is the Oxfam programme manager for this region. He is compactly built, handsome, boyish. He was educated during the last days of Tolbert's regime ('He was killed in my final year of high school'). Nyan helps rebuild the small village communities of Bong, a strategic area fought over by all the warring factions. People live in tiny traditional thatched huts arranged around a central ground. It is quiet and clean. The communities are close-knit and gather around the visitors to join the conversation. In one village a woman explains the food situation. She is '1-0-0', her children are (usually) '1-0-1'; there are many others who are '0-0-1'. It is a binary system that describes 'meals per day'. Still, things are improving: there are schools here now, there are latrines. Nyan's projects encourage the creation of rice paddies; the men work in them, the women take the rice to market. It is more than the subsistence farming that existed before the war. Nyan's dream is to connect all these villages in a trading ring that utilises Bong's strategic centrality and sells produce on to Monrovia.

Nyan: 'You have to understand, in this area, everything was destroyed. The largest displaced camps were here. We helped people go back to where their villages formerly were; we helped them rebuild. All that you see here was done with DFID money - the Department for International Development. They are Brit ish. They funded us with pounds 271,000 - they gave us this twice. And I am happy to say we met 100 per cent of our targets. Creating infrastructure and training individuals. The money went a very long way. It helped to train Liberian staff. It helped provide assistance at the county level for the ministry of health. It was quite an enormous help.'

'This is the good aid story,' says Lysbeth. 'People find that very boring.'

As we leave the village, the gardener in Lysbeth looks around for signs of soil cultivation. Heavy, wet palms cascade over each other, but there are no fields. Nyan prides himself on his frankness: 'We can't blame anyone else. The truth is we don't have the knowledge and skill about farming. It has always been slash, burn and plant. The only industrial farming our people have known here is the rubber plantations. That is the only major industry our people know. Everything else was not developed.'

There are such things as Third World Products. In the market where the women sell their rice, a boy's T-shirt reads 'David Beckham' but the picture beneath is of Thierry Henry. The plastic buckets the women carry have bad ink jobs - the colours run like tie-dye. The products no one else wants come to Liberia. 'And our meat is the same,' explains Nyan. 'Chicken feet, pig feet. That's what people are sold. More tendon than flesh. No nutritional value.'

Half a mile down the road, Mrs Shaw, an 80-year-old Liberian teacher, sits in front of her small home. She has taught three generations of Liberian children on a wage she describes as 'less then the rubber tappers: US$25 a month'. She says the children she teaches have changed, over the years. Now they are 'hot headed'. They are angry about their situation? She frowns: 'No, angry at each other.' As we leave, Lysbeth spots three graves in the yard. 'My sons,' says Mrs Shaw. 'They were poisoned.' Lysbeth assumes this is metaphorical, but Abraham shakes his head. He doesn't know what the poison is, exactly: maybe some kind of leaf extract. In the vehicle he explains: 'Her sons, they were working in government, quite good jobs. It happens that when you're doing well, sometimes you are poisoned. They put something in your drink. I always watch my glass when I am out.'

The visitors sit on the porch eating dinner at CooCoo's Nest, the second best hotel in Liberia. CooCoo, the owner, was a mistress of President Tubman's; she lives in America now. In her absence it is run by Kamal E Ghanam, a louche, chain-smoking Lebanese in a safari suit who asks you kindly not to switch on the light in your room until after 7pm. Kamal also manages the rubber plantation behind. He brings out the sangria as Abraham and Nyan bond. These two are members of a very small group in Liberia: the makeshift Liberian middle class, created in large part by the presence of the NGOs. 'It's difficult,' explains Abraham. 'Even if I paint my house, people begin talking. "He is Congo now." As soon as you have anything at all, you are isolated from the people.' They show off their battle scars, knife wounds from street robberies. Aubrey, who has been photographing the plantations, arrives. He has news: he met a rubber worker in the field.

'His name is David. He doesn't know his age - but we worked out with various references to events during war that he's about 35 years old. He has three living children and three who died. He was born on the plantation and has worked there since he was 10 or 12, he thinks. He wants to be able to keep his own children in school but at the current rate of pay he won't be able to afford to. He works seven days a week. He says workers on the plantation live in camps that were built in 1952. There are no schools or medical facilities nearby - anyway, he couldn't afford them. He taps about 50lb of raw latex per day. He said it's a long day, from sunrise until late.'

Aubrey is breathless and excited: we have the feeling that we are intrepid journalists, uncovering a great, unknown iniquity. In fact the conditions on Liberian rubber plantations are well documented. In a CNN report of 2005, Firestone president Dan Adomitis explained that each worker 'only' taps 650 to 750 trees a day and that each tree takes two to three minutes. Taking the lower of these two estimates equals 21 hours a day of rubber tapping. In the past, parents brought their children with them to help them meet the quota; when this was reported, Firestone banned the practice. Now people bring their children before dawn.

Kamal smokes, listens, sighs. He says: 'Listen, this is how it is,' as if talking of some unstoppable natural weather phenomenon. He pauses. Then, more strongly: 'Now be careful about this tapper. He is not from Firestone, I think. He is from a different place.' Nyan smiles. 'Kamal, we both know that plantation - it sells to a middleman who sells to Firestone. Everybody sells to Firestone.' Kamal shrugs. Nyan turns back to the visitors: 'Firestone is a taboo subject here, but it is better paid than most work. You would have to have a very strong lobby in the US government to stop them. The whole reason Firestone came to Liberia in the first place was as a means of creating a permanent supply of rubber for the American military. The British had increased the taxes on Malaysian rubber - the Americans didn't want to pay that. They needed a permanent solution. So they planted the rubber - it's not native to Liberia. Really, they created a whole industry. It sounds strange, but these are some of the best jobs in Liberia.'

Kamal goes inside to collect dessert. Abraham leans over the table.

'Do you know what people say? In 2003, when the war was at its worst, the only places in Liberia that were safe were the US embassy and Firestone. Everywhere else there was looting and killing. The American marines were offshore - we kept hoping they would come ashore. What were they waiting for? But we waited and then they sailed away. And that is when people got disappointed.'

Everyone at the table is asked why they think the war happened. Nyan says: 'Let me tell you first my candid feeling: every Liberian in one way or another took part in the war. Either spiritually, financially, psychologically or physically. And to answer your question: in a sense there was no reason. Brothers killed brothers, friends killed friends, only to come back the next day and regret they ever did it in the first place. For me the real reason was greed. And poverty. All that the warlords wanted was property. When they stormed Monrovia, they did not even pretend to fight each other. They killed people in their homes and then painted their own names on the walls. When Ms Sirleaf took over Guttridge's rubber plantation - US$2.8m a month - it was still occupied by rebel forces, and they refused to leave for a year and a half. They wanted to be in the rubber business. But they destroyed the trees - didn't tap them properly. It will take another 10 years to replant.'

Saturday

Lunch in La Pointe, the 'good restaurant' in Monrovia. The view is of sheer cliff dropping to marshland, and beyond this, blue-green waters. During the war the beach was scattered with human skulls. Now it is simply empty. In Jamaica, tourists marry on beaches like these. They stand barefoot in wedding outfits in white sand owned by German hotel chains and hold up champagne flutes, recreating an image from a brochure. This outcome for Liberia - a normalised, if exploitative, 'tourist economy' - seems almost too good to hope for. At present La Pointe is patronised solely by NGO workers, government officials and foreign businessmen. A Liberian passes by in a reasonably nice suit. Abraham: 'He's a supreme court judge.' Another man in a tie: 'Oh, he's Kenyan. He owns an airline.' Everywhere in Liberia it is the same: there are only the very poor and the very powerful. In the missing middle, for now: the 'International Community'. The monitoring agency Gemap (Liberia Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program) is in place. No government cheque over US$500 can be signed without their knowledge. It is very hard to be good in these conditions. President Johnson-Sirleaf has promised to review the 2005 Mittal Steel and Firestone concessions. We hope and pray. Behind our table an Englishman, a Lebanese and a Liberian are having a lunch meeting. Englishman: 'You see, I'm worried about management morale. The troops soon feel it if management is low. At the moment it's like a bloody sauna in there. Maybe we could just give them a few things... a nice bed, bed sheets, something so they won't be bitten to death at night. They're so happy if you do that - you wouldn't believe it!'

Liberian: 'I ask you please not to worry about malaria - we get it all the time in Liberia. I promise you we are used to it!'

The history of Liberia consists of elegant variations on this conversation.

The Toyota rolls up in front of Paynesville School. Motto: Helping our selve through Development [sic]. Aubrey causes a riot in the playground: everyone wants their picture taken. Some are in uniform, others in NGO T-shirts. Fifty or so wear a shirt that says 'China and Liberia: Friendship Forever'. We are here only for one boy. We were given his name by Don Bosco Homes, a Catholic organisation that specialises in the rehabilitation of child ex-combatants.

He is very small for 15, with a close-shaved, perfectly round head and long, pretty eyelashes. He has the transcendental air of a child lama. Three big men bring him to us in a corner of the yard and go to fetch a chair. He stays the wrist of one of the men with a finger and shakes his head. 'It's too hot here to talk. We'll go inside.'

In a small office at the back of the school four nervous adults supervise the interview. Lysbeth, who has teenage children herself, looks as if she might cry even before Richard speaks. It's been a long week. Richard is determined to make it easy for us. He smiles gently at the dictaphone: 'It's OK. Are you sure that it's on?'

'My name is Richard S Jack. I was 12 in 2003. I was living with my mother when the second civil war began. I was playing on a football field when men came and grabbed me. It was done by force - I had no desire to join that war. They called themselves the Marine Force. They took both teams of boys away. They threw us in a truck. I thought I wasn't going to see my parents any more. They took me to Lofah Bridge. What happened there? We were taught to do certain things. We were taught to use AK-47s. I was with them for a year and a half. We were many different kinds of Liberians and Sierra Leoneans, many boys. The first one or two weeks I was so scared. After that it became a part of me. I went out of my proper and natural way. War makes people go out of their proper and natural way. It is a thing that destroys even your thoughts. People still don't know what the war was about. I know. It was a terrible misunderstanding. But it is not a part of me any more. I don't want violence in me any more. Whenever I sit and think about the past, I get this attitude: I am going to raise myself up. So I tell people about my past. They should know who I was. Sometimes it is hard. But it wasn't difficult to explain to my mother. She understood how everything was. She knew I was not a bad person in my heart. Now I want to be most wise. My dream is to become somebody good in this nation. I have a feeling that Liberia could be a great nation. But I also want to see the world. I love the study of geography. I want to become a pilot. You want me to fly you somewhere? Sure. Come and find me in 10 years. I promise we will fly places.'

Afterword

On 17 November 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a class-action lawsuit against Firestone along with several plaintiffs, now adult, who had been child labourers and their children, who are currently child labourers, on the Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia. This lawsuit is ongoing. For more information, go to www.stopfirestone.org. To read Firestone's own account of its business in Liberia, go to www.firestonenaturalrubber.com.

· For more information on Oxfam's work in Liberia and around the world, or to make a donation, go to www.oxfam.org.uk/donate; 0870 333 2500